About

Janet Currie is a Professor of Economics at Yale School of the Environment. Her research focuses on child mental health, the impact of wildfire and smoke in Canada, homelessness and the shelter system, and treatment of mental illness in adolescents. She has contributed to understanding trends in emergency department visits related to child mental health, the effects of Medicaid on child homelessness, and the treatment of mental illness in US adolescents. Her work often involves evaluating public health initiatives and analyzing the effects of social and environmental factors on health outcomes.

Research topics

• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Emergency medicine
• Pharmacology
• Medical emergency
• Economics
• Demography
• Statistics
• Mathematics
• Virology
• Anesthesia
• Environmental health
• Psychiatry
• Gerontology

Selected publications

• Manufacturing Supply Chains and Imports in the ADHD Drug Shortage

  JAMA Health Forum · 2026-03-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Importance: The US has faced a nationwide shortage of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications since 2022, yet the underlying causes remain unclear. Public debate has largely centered on prescribing trends and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) quotas, although evidence suggests that quotas were not binding. A sound policy response requires a clear understanding of the drivers behind the shortage. Objective: To examine descriptive evidence on the potential causes of the shortage. Setting and Design: In this economic evaluation, we use time series data (2015-2025) from multiple sources, such as Symphony Health and the DEA's Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) summary reports, to characterize US production, consumption, and trade of amphetamine-based and other stimulants, including manufacturer-level production volumes, before and during the shortage period. Findings: The sharp, simultaneous production cutbacks across several medium-sized and smaller manufacturers in late 2022 and early 2023 coincided with a steep contraction in US imports of raw amphetamines and more modest declines in phenylacetone, a key precursor. Conclusions and Relevance: These patterns align with manufacturers' reports to the US Food and Drug Administration citing a shortage of the active ingredient as the cause of backorders. More broadly, this economic evaluation reframes the discussion of ADHD medication shortages beyond DEA quotas, highlighting the vulnerability of US pharmaceutical manufacturing to international supply chain disruptions and underscoring the need for policies that strengthen supply chain resilience.

  PublisherDOI

• Universal Access to Counsel, Housing Court Filings, and Child Mental Health: Evidence from New York City

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2025-05-01 · 2 citations

  article

  We link data from Medicaid to housing court records to study the relationship between housing instability and children's mental health. Of Medicaid children aged 4-17 in New York City, 14 percent faced housing court from 2016-2019. Using rollout of universal access to counsel as an instrument, we find that children in families with possessory judgments are 1.6 times more likely to move, 8 times more likely to experience homelessness, and 53 percent more likely to have mental health claims. Effects are strongest for children without preexisting conditions and are not explained by use of health care more generally.

  PublisherDOI

• What Can Trends in Emergency Department Visits Tell Us About Child Mental Health?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Child Disability and Effects on Sibling Mental Health

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Screening for postpartum depression at well child visits: evaluating the impact of Michigan’s statewide initiative

  Health Economics Review · 2025-08-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  OBJECTIVE: To examine a 2018 rule change allowing pediatric providers to bill the child's Medicaid ID for post-partum depression (PPD) screening of mothers conducted during well-child visits, and document its relationship with PPD treatment and infant hospitalizations. STUDY SETTING AND DESIGN: Screening rates during well-child visits are calculated at the zip code level and used in linear probability and Instrumental Variable (IV) models to examine increases in screening after the policy change and relate them to PPD treatment and infant hospitalizations. DATA SOURCES AND ANALYTIC SAMPLE: Individual-level Medicaid claims were used to compute PPD screening rates and measures of PPD treatment and infant hospitalization. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The policy was associated with increases in screening rates, although take up was uneven and overall screening rates remained low at 8.8%. There was little overall increase in treatment, although in zip codes in the top third of screening rates, higher screening was associated with 10.1% higher probability of maternal treatment. Zip codes with high fractions in poverty and/or minority had low screening rates, but screening was more likely to be associated with increases in treatment in these areas. There are no effects in the full sample of children, but among children above the poverty line, the observed increases in screening reduced the probability of infant hospitalization in the first six months by 7.7%. CONCLUSIONS: The policy change had only limited success increasing screening, but increased screening could lead to more maternal PPD treatment and lower infant hospitalization rates if accompanied by expanded access to PPD treatment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Affordable Housing During Childhood Improves Long-term Outcomes of Women and their Children

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-11-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Failure of Life Expectancy to Fully Rebound to Prepandemic Levels

  JAMA · 2025-07-09 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  This study uses data from the California Comprehensive Death Files to examine how California life expectancy varied by year, income, race and ethnicity, and contributing causes of death after the COVID-19 pandemic.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wildfire, Smoke and Mental Health in Canada

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Rules versus Discretion: Treatment of Mental Illness in US Adolescents

  Journal of Political Economy · 2025-08-20 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Does Public Health Insurance Cause Crowding Into Public Facilities and Informality? The Case of Seguro Popular

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-11-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Many low and middle-income countries are working to expand health insurance to previously uncovered people by creating health insurance programs intended for low-income people who would otherwise lack insurance coverage.Two concerns have been raised about these programs.First, people may be "crowded out" of private facilities and into public ones, increasing public expense and possibly degrading care through crowding.Second, public insurance could encourage informality by reducing the gap in compensation between formal sector and informal sector workers.We examine these questions in the context of Mexico's Seguro Popular (SP) using longitudinal administrative data on childbirth.We focus on women with more than one observed birth and ask how SP affects the choice of provider for those whose first observed birth was in a public hospital, a private hospital, or a separate system of hospitals serving formal sector workers.We also look at how SP affects the utilization of care and newborn health.Because SP enrollment is endogenous, we instrument it using the rollout of a second program, SMSXXI, that provided health care for young children and enrolled other family members in SP.We find that the expansion of SMSXXI increased SP coverage of pregnant women.This in turn led to a higher probability of delivering in a public hospital, especially among those who had previously delivered in a private hospital.We find little impact of SP enrollment on the utilization of care or newborn health, with the notable exception that women who previously delivered in a private hospital were more likely to start prenatal care in the first trimester when they switched to SP, indicating a greater willingness to seek preventive care when it is free.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21AG041404

  NIH · $221k · 2016

• NIH Grant R21HD055613

  NIH · $403k · 2010

• NIH Grant R21HD050740

  NIH · $399k · 2010

Frequent coauthors

• W. Bentley MacLeod

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  189 shared

• Reed Walker

  94 shared

• Emilia Simeonova

  87 shared

• Hannes Schwandt

  76 shared

• Peter Nilsson

  68 shared

• Enrico Moretti

  University of California, Berkeley

  62 shared

• Michael Greenstone

  University of Chicago

  59 shared

• Donna K. Ginther

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  53 shared

Education

• PhD, Economics

  Princeton University

  1988